Among the many awards that Ulrich Tukur has received, one is irritating at first glance: in 2013 the actor, musician, singer and writer received the Jacob Grimm Prize. It is awarded to people who have made a special contribution to the recognition, further development and maintenance of German as a cultural language. A professor’s prize, a serious matter.
At second glance, however, the choice seems immediately plausible: Ulrich Tukur’s multi-talented, diverse work, which also includes the recording of poems and ballads or audio books, can actually be understood as language cultivation.
Where the word means the world, he is at home – as a quick-change artist and someone who takes entertaining the audience as seriously as it needs to be. Tukur has the nonchalance and the wink that the performance in tails or on the piano with his Hamburg band “Rhythm Boys” requires to avoid being suspected of being lard.
The formal garment suits him well. You just have to be able to wear it, just like a hat. For Tukur, who has a determined hat face, “bella figura” and lively language culture mediation belong together. On July 29 he will be 65 years old.
The actor, who was just as brilliant as John Rabe as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as “Jedermann” in Salzburg and as a “Tatort” inspector, was born Ulrich Scheurlen in 1957 in Viernheim, Hesse. It is said that he created his surname Tukur from a family anecdote that has been handed down, it is based on a translation joke.
The story from the time of Napoleon’s occupation is indicative of the artist’s ironic self-image: “Napoleon, tout court” (simply just Napoleon) is said to have been written by an official who kept the register as “Tukur” on the paper.
Tukur made his film debut while he was still studying acting, in 1982 in Michael Verhoeven’s “The White Rose” as Willi Graf, a member of the resistance group around Hans and Sophie Scholl. But he experienced his formative years working with the theater director Peter Zadek, playing a wide variety of roles, from SS officer to Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
In 1986 he was named Actor of the Year. He was a member of the ensemble at the Hamburger Schauspielhaus under Zadek, later he changed sides and became artistic director of the Hamburger Kammerspiele. “First and foremost, I feel like a Hamburger,” said Tukur once, he is still a member of the Free Academy of Arts in the Hanseatic city.
The father of two children, who is married to the photographer Katharina John in his second marriage, became a star of the public in film and television. He was seen in the Oscar-winning film “The Lives of Others”, in Michael Haneke’s “The White Ribbon” or in the hilarious, painfully true breakup story “And who takes the dog?” alongside Martina Gedeck.
Many of Tukur’s roles not only have a historical background, his portrayals also convey historical awareness through special fictional interpretation. In films such as “Rommel” and “Stauffenberg”, historical event television miniseries such as “Die Luftbrücke” or as Wiesbaden “Tatort” commissioner Felix Murot, whose criminalistic work has a nostalgic and detailed trait, he shows himself to be a transformation chameleon.
Sometimes it seems as if Ulrich Tukur was born in the wrong century. You can imagine him as a circus performer, jester or mentalist of the turn of the century or as a summer tourist following the example of the Frenchman Jacques Tati (1907-1982). The lightest of his “crime scenes”, “The Holidays of Monsieur Murot”, takes up the humorous elegance of Tati’s role model, “The Holidays of Monsieur Hulot”, and transfers the whole vacation scene to a wealthy Taunus town, where Tukur’s character with a linen suit and Circular saw seems like a glorious anachronism.
It is as if Tukur wanted to use creativity to protect himself from having to live exclusively in the present. As if it must be possible to ascribe numerous possibilities to the reality of life. The anachronistic habitus can also be found in the dance band “Ulrich Tukur
Where trumpeting and clattering is part of the musician’s and entertainer’s trade, writing is the opposite business. Author Ulrich Tukur, who lived in Venice and Tuscany for many years and only recently in Berlin, began with stories that he collected in Venice (“The water lily in the dining room. Venetian stories”). In keeping with the lagoon city, the events recorded there have a morbid and fantastic quality. In the meantime, he has published a collection of love poems, “Woe, confused, wondrous words”, as well as other books, including a novel.
If only painting and sculpture are missing in addition to acting, music and singing as well as writing, then the creative manifestations are probably complete. But that can still come. Because Ulrich Tukur will only be 65.
Ulrich Tukur will play on September 2nd
